


The smaller risk

by Searofyr



Series: Born to uncertain parents, something about dragons, way too early [6]
Category: Elder Scrolls, Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind
Genre: Established Relationship, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-30
Updated: 2020-11-30
Packaged: 2021-03-10 02:15:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,419
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27806671
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Searofyr/pseuds/Searofyr
Summary: From the journal of Riacil, Lorkhan’s chosen, Morrowind 3E.The required order of events seemed clear. A prophecy and a terrible disease. Two Telvanni mages, both experienced in Restoration magic. One of them the Nerevarine, targeted by the disease, the other with a cure.Centuries earlier, Lorkhan had picked them for his own, and now he has to learn that it’s not just himself who complicates everything he touches. Sometimes his followers are worse.
Relationships: Divayth Fyr/Male Dunmer Nerevarine, Divayth Fyr/Nerevarine, Lorkhan/Male Bosmer Vestige
Series: Born to uncertain parents, something about dragons, way too early [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1997554
Kudos: 8





	The smaller risk

**Author's Note:**

> “House Hlaalu and House Redoran are pretty reasonable. House Telvanni – the wizard house – they’re another story.” – Indrele Rathryon, Seyda Neen 3E 427. The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind.

I don’t know if I can ever tell this story, but I’m writing it down anyway.

It started with Lorkhan waking me up, spreading aggravation in my mind, with just the tiniest sliver of amusement, before honing the mix into words. Starting with, “For fucks’s sake.”

“What is it?” I asked, still trying to find my bearings.

“House Telvanni,” he said as if that explained everything. Because it does.

“Ours?” I asked. It was an almost pointless question. Two of his prominent followers that I’ve helped recruit for him in the last era are deeply involved in the mess going on in Morrowind at the moment, after all. As we knew they would be.

Lothryn especially, now that the world can finally know he’s Nerevar reborn, and he’s supposed to take down the Tribunal or at least their divinity (he’s already sworn to protect one of them long ago, so Azura will have to have some patience with the details in the execution), and – particularly relevant for us – free Lorkhan’s heart from its shackles. We’re expecting chaos and upheaval, and Lorkhan is expecting a resurgence of power, perhaps, amidst chaos, unless it all goes wrong. As it often does with him.

Divayth Fyr has been at Lothryn’s side since around the Planemeld crisis and the dragon break in the second era, has gradually joined him in his particular Restoration research, and in their own way they’ve had a stabilising influence on each other all this time.

What you can’t forget is that destabilising the rest of the world is not incompatible with that, and that “in their own way” needs a flexible interpretation when House Telvanni is involved.

“You already know it’s ours,” Lorkhan said.

“Yeah. Figured. What’s it? Something to do with the prophecy?”

His ghostly form exhaled. “Oh yes.”

“Well, don’t make me prod you about everything! What have they done?”

“I’m not going to tell you,” Lorkhan said. “I’m going to have _them_ tell you. Here’s one hint: _Divayth_ has called on me.”

“He doesn’t do that a lot,” I stated.

“No he doesn’t. And I want him to tell you directly; it’s so much better that way.”

Did I detect amusement again? Yeah I did, underneath layers upon layers of annoyance.

“Get ready,” he said, “I’ll transport you over. And then you’re doing the talking; I’ll need the rest of my reserves to deal with this. For fuck’s sake, this was not supposed to be our problem. We were supposed to quietly wait this out and let the Dunmer and Azura’s prophecy deal with it.”

“You did take her champion,” I pointed out. “Her favourite. That she resurrected cause she was so upset, and created this whole prophecy mess around.”

“Yeah. Yeah. I did do that. And now I get to deal with it. Fucking Dunmer, fucking Daedra.”

Amidst his muttering, I was knocked out of consciousness.

I woke up in Tel Fyr, on a couch by a crackling blue fire that was actually warming. So they’d figured that out since the last time I’d been there.

Divayth was watching me from an armchair. He looked terrible.

There’s the question: Do you ask? Corprus or no? If no, you’ve insulted his vanity, and perhaps this was just exhaustion and age catching up with him. And he’s a vain type. But I didn’t know him to be vain enough to call on his patron god over his appearance.

“Oh spare me that look and the consideration,” he said. “It’s Corprus.”

“That obvious, huh.”

“You’ve never been subtle.”

“True that.” I mustered him. Bit the inside of my lip. Bad habit. And it’s not like it stops you giving away your thoughts. “So…” I was lightheaded and didn’t process the information right for a while. Then bit by bit it sunk in. “But how?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“I suppose it doesn’t, does it?” But then there’d been Lorkhan’s reaction. They’d done _something_. And he wanted them to tell me themselves. And all Nord myths about honourable deaths in battle aside, Lorkhan doesn’t blame people for their illnesses. There was more to this. And it was uncomfortable, but I was going to have to dig a bit further. Also. They. Not ‘he’. ‘They.’

By the snows of Sovngarde, it was unsettling seeing Divayth so frail.

But he was watching me with piercing eyes, more tired than I’m used to from him, even from difficult times, but still ready to cut through anything. He was waiting. Time to do him the favour and dig.

I took a deep breath. “What about Lothryn? He’s here, isn’t he?”

“Sleeping. Not that it does him well, but it’s necessary. And there’s only so long he can avoid it. To answer the question that you’re actually trying to ask: He caught it before me, on a mission that made it probably unavoidable.”

I exhaled. Noticed my breath was shaky. I bit my lip again. I really cared about these two.

Lorkhan had been amused. But what by? There was nothing funny about this. _Perhaps_ , if you didn’t care so personally, and you considered the Corprusarium in the basement…

And there was that prophecy, the one Lorkhan had said this related to… according to which the Nerevarine was going to live forever and be immune… And there was the fact that they had started research on a cure together a while ago…

And then when Lothryn had had to leave Morrowind for an errand and got himself imprisoned in Cyrodiil, and all the vaguely announced events were set in motion, and Divayth had been dead-set on completing the cure on his own... And there were his assurances last time we spoke that he knew what he was doing…

 _Perhaps_ you could make a certain point as for a certain humorous component to this situation. But that was still not like Lorkhan. Especially with his favourites. This was no good; I wasn’t getting to the bottom of things like this.

So I disregarded etiquette, probably as Divayth wanted me to anyway, and asked more: “But how? Not to blame you, I don’t do that, no matter what this sounds like, but…”

“Ask your questions.”

“Well – how? Shouldn’t it have been somewhat easy for you not to catch it?” I know it sounded more helpless than anything. Certainly not reflected.

“On the other hand, we have the Corprusarium in the basement, with many aggressive inhabitants, and my partner has caught it, too. It was, in fact, easy to catch it.”

“But you always said you knew what you were doing.”

“I did know what I was doing. I told Lothryn the same.” Completely calm now. Not befitting the situation he was in at all.

Wait a moment…

But no. No. Try with a sensible question, from one sensible person to another. “Do you have the cure?” I asked. “Not ready yet, right? Or you wouldn’t have called on Lorkhan. You need help? How far are you?”

“It’s done.”

What the…

“For Lothryn. Assuming he is indeed the Nerevarine. It’ll kill anyone else. An old prototype we began together and that I finished while he was in Cyrodiil and then busy with house politics here. And we’re not entirely certain it will work.”

I took some more deep breaths. “Alright. Well that’s not in doubt.”

“It _is_ still in doubt. Of course we’re rather certain of his identity, but not of the cure. There remains this element of doubt until he takes the potion and survives.”

“Alright. So you want to be certain about Lothryn, and then… We need to help you, too, somehow. Well, damn it. I actually don’t know how. Let me get back to Lorkhan and…”

“I’ll save you the time. There is no way,” Divayth said. “Try as we might, as long as this disease is about, and I’m not just talking about Corprus, but this perversion of a ‘house’, too, there is no way to cure anyone but the Nerevarine.” Said with such calm!

“And you’re sure, yeah?”

“Very sure. If there was an alternative, we would have found it by now. This is the best we can do.”

“So we need to stall your illness somehow until Lothryn can do whatever he needs and… Maybe we can work with that somehow. Has he taken the cure yet?”

“Not yet,” Divayth said.

“But _why_? Did you want the assurance first? Or us around for emergencies? I understand that, I guess. But I don’t know how much I can promise.”

“That is appreciated. But I have a separate request for your… our patron god. Or not separate, depending how you look at it.”

Where in the world had I landed here? Tel Fyr. I know. I know. “Is this _really_ the time to negotiate?”

“It’s the only time. My request is this: Regardless of the outcome of the cure, whether Lothryn lives or dies, I want you – or rather Lorkhan – to tie our fates and lifespans together. Tie mine to his, that is. If he is cured, cure me as well, and keep it connected. When he does die, I go, too, and I go where he goes. That includes if the cure is unsuccessful.”

I just stared at him for a few moments.

Then I heard Lorkhan’s voice in my mind. ‘Good, huh? Really outdid themselves this time.’

‘Wait,’ I thought back at him, ‘you mean that was…’ The thought I’d started to think but hadn’t wanted to finish. ‘Intentional.’

‘Can you tell me again why I wanted these two?’

And then finally the shock gave way to laughter. “I can’t believe you two,” I gasped when I was able to. And to Lorkhan, ‘Because they’re like this. That’s why.’

‘Don’t be right so often.’

Divayth raised an eyebrow and leaned back in his armchair. Not the usual display of relaxed control. He looked sincerely tired, and it broke my heart and turned me back to serious.

“To be fair to Lothryn,” he said, “this was my idea. He’ll understand when he wakes up. He’ll appreciate it, too. He probably has an idea. He has an idea I might have it, too. It’s getting obvious enough. But his lucidity has seen better days, and he needed sleep first, unrestful as it is, with him the main target of this…” He gestured into the air. “This disgraceful madness. And I needed to clear this up among us first.”

‘You get it now?’ Lorkhan asked me, grim mirth in his voice.

‘Yeah. Well, we’re fixing it, right?’

He sighed.

‘I love them, and you love them, too. We’re fixing it.’

‘Yeah I know,’ he said. ‘Of course we’re fixing it. It’s a foregone conclusion, and he knows it. But damn it, he could have asked. Or postponed this nonsense somehow. Say, till Lothryn is done and I have my power back.’

I turned my focus back to Divayth. “Lorkhan says you could have asked or postponed this nonsense somehow. Till…”

“Too late, and too risky. And I abhor unnecessary risks.”

I snorted. “And that’s why you caught yourself Corprus.”

“It was the smaller risk.”

I fell silent. And sighed. I understood it, didn’t I? “You’ve got to stick with him, huh.”

“Under any and all circumstances. I’m not leaving him alone in immortality. Nor death. Besides, if it’s at all doable, it’s covered by blood oaths.”

“Doable,” I echoed.

“You know who we are. A lot of things are doable for us. And for the rest, we have an erratic patron god with a penchant for miracles within chaos. Tell me that emotional and religious investment paid off.”

“You _could_ have asked,” I insisted. “We love you, and I think you know that. Or you wouldn’t have done this. That kind of blackmail only works when the divine party conveniently cares a lot about you.”

He shrugged with one shoulder. “Perhaps. So. Will you?”

I nudged Lorkhan in my mind.

‘Yes, yes,’ he said. ‘Now you lie down on one of those couches and get comfortable, and get a blanket, because I’ll be needing to use you for energy. You will definitely pass out for a while. And tell this genius here to fetch Lothryn and the cure. I’ll take care of things from here.”

‘Thanks,’ I said and brushed against his mind with my own.

‘Yeah, yeah.’

I relayed the instructions to Divayth, and added a few more coming in, and installed myself on a couch close by the fire, with several blankets.

Divayth game me long look. “Thank you. Wherever this will end up. I won’t forget this.”

I laid my hand on his arm because he was close enough to reach. “Of course. We want to. You’re ours, insane as you are. And.” I pursed my lips. “I get it.”

He shot me a ghost of his usual thin smile. “I figured as much.”

I withdrew my arm and adjusted the blankets for the imminent blackout I was feeling. “Really though. Good thing we were faster, or you two would have been recruited for the Shivering Isles.”

“Oh please,” I heard his fading voice. “This is merely on a personal scale. Only of interest to a few people. Well, and in Lothryn’s case all of Morrowind, potentially. Leave the Shivering Isles to the ones who create dragon breaks.”

I smiled and closed my eyes and heard him leave the room.

I woke up much later, after few half-lucid moments in between long stretches of unconsciousness. Turned out this one had been a difficult task. But it also turned out Divayth was once again right about what was doable, for them, for our erratic patron god, and perhaps also with some aid from their earlier set of blood oaths, because they don’t do reasonable in any context.

Turns out that pays off.

But then, I knew that, didn’t I? Why else would I be where I am?

Divayth also proved right about Lothryn appreciating this style of risk minimisation once he was back to health and lucidity, because of course he would.

‘You know,’ Lorkhan said in a tired but conversational tone, ‘by _reasonable_ standards, we just did something highly questionable. Not one but a set of two nigh-immortal, cured Telvanni wizards, who have been taught the lesson that they’ll get away with just about anything.’

I smiled, etched painfully into my face from relief. ‘Good thing we did there.’

‘Yeah. You know… It was my duty to be annoyed until we had the sure result. Now it’s time to be proud.’


End file.
